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School Bus Drivers See No Gain From Strike

They lost pay, watched bills pile up at home and endured cold days and nights on picket lines. They weathered criticism in some quarters as holdouts for archaic and costly job protections. And, perhaps most stingingly, the struggle bore no immediate fruit.

Several workers in New York City’s main union for school bus drivers vented their anger on Tuesday, a day before they were to get back behind the wheel, over their monthlong walkout.

Marc E. Clergeau, 56, a driver for the past 20 years who now works at Lonero Transit, providing bus service to city schoolchildren, assessed what had been achieved: “Nothing,” he said. “We didn’t get anything we wanted.”

The union, which began the walkout on Jan. 16, decided on Friday night to return to work. On Saturday, the schools chancellor, Dennis M. Walcott, sent a letter to all 43 bus companies serving the city schools telling them that all 7,700 bus routes were to be operational by Wednesday, with buses checked for maintenance. Since then, he has said the day would be treated like the first day of school, and there would undoubtedly be delays to manage.

There were 100,000 children affected by the strike, many with disabilities, officials said.

For their part, leaders of the union, Local 1181 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, were portraying the strike as the start of a long war that was spreading to other fronts, including Albany. The union called the strike to protest Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s decision to begin stripping employee protections from contracts that the city signed with private bus companies. The mayor cited a court ruling that prohibited the city from including protective provisions in new contracts.

A month ago, the bus drivers’ cause was little known, the union leaders said. Now it is now under a spotlight. And they pointed out that the strike had earned them a joint letter from several Democratic mayoral candidates who said they would favor the job protections.

Asked about the anger of some drivers, Lawrence J. Hanley, the international vice president of the union, said on Tuesday that he had a “democratic union.”

“There is always dissatisfaction among the ranks, and when I say that, I don’t mean only in unions,” Mr. Hanley said. “There is never unanimity in any field of combat.”

But Mr. Clergeau and other drivers said that a promise from a possible future mayor sounded hollow. Many said the strike left them with an unsettling question: Was it all a waste of time?

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Instead of their regular salaries, they received $150 to $300 a week from union strike funds. The money never seemed enough, many said, and they described juggling car loans, child support payments, mortgages and rent. Something always went unpaid.

Then, at the end of January, their health coverage ran out.

“We are still working, but we did not get what we want,” said Gordon Baumann, 48, another driver for Lonero.

He said the union had struck at the “wrong time,” just after the holidays, leaving many workers little time to obtain contingency health coverage or make sure “we had money to pay our bills.”

Another driver, Everest W. Jones, 51, said the effort had largely been misunderstood by the public, in part because of the Bloomberg administration’s criticism.

“We were the enemy,” Mr. Jones said. “The public looked at the drivers and the matrons and mechanics as the enemy.”

He faulted his union for being slow. “That strike,” he said, “should have been done a year ago.”

Many drivers said they feared what the future might bring.

Carl Robinson, who has driven a school bus for 13 years, questioned whether vendors who won new city contracts would be able to dismiss him and then offer him his job back at a lower salary.

But, Mr. Robinson said, the strike had to end. “We all want to go back to work,” he said. “Everyone has bills and we’re not able to get by.”

Randy Leonard and Nate Schweber contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on February 20, 2013, on Page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: Bus Drivers For Schools See No Gain From Strike. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe